But I fixed him.  I lacerated his feelings and pride several dollars’ worth.  He tried to scare me by threatening to come in after me and kick the stuffing out of me.  In return, I promised to kick him in the face while he was climbing in.  The advantage of position was with me, and he saw it.  So he kept the door shut and called for help from the rest of the train-crew.  I could hear them answering and crunching through the gravel to him.  And all the time the other door was unlatched, and they didn’t know it; and in the meantime the gay-cat was ready to die with fear.

Oh, I was a hero—­with my line of retreat straight behind me.  I slanged the shack and his mates till they threw the door open and I could see their infuriated faces in the shine of the lanterns.  It was all very simple to them.  They had us cornered in the car, and they were going to come in and man-handle us.  They started.  I didn’t kick anybody in the face.  I jerked the opposite door open, and the gay-cat and I went out.  The train-crew took after us.

We went over—­if I remember correctly—­a stone fence.  But I have no doubts of recollection about where we found ourselves.  In the darkness I promptly fell over a grave-stone.  The gay-cat sprawled over another.  And then we got the chase of our lives through that graveyard.  The ghosts must have thought we were going some.  So did the train-crew, for when we emerged from the graveyard and plunged across a road into a dark wood, the shacks gave up the pursuit and went back to their train.  A little later that night the gay-cat and I found ourselves at the well of a farmhouse.  We were after a drink of water, but we noticed a small rope that ran down one side of the well.  We hauled it up and found on the end of it a gallon-can of cream.  And that is as near as I got to the quarries of Rutland, Vermont.

When hoboes pass the word along, concerning a town, that “the bulls is horstile,” avoid that town, or, if you must, go through softly.  There are some towns that one must always go through softly.  Such a town was Cheyenne, on the Union Pacific.  It had a national reputation for being “horstile,”—­and it was all due to the efforts of one Jeff Carr (if I remember his name aright).  Jeff Carr could size up the “front” of a hobo on the instant.  He never entered into discussion.  In the one moment he sized up the hobo, and in the next he struck out with both fists, a club, or anything else he had handy.  After he had man-handled the hobo, he started him out of town with a promise of worse if he ever saw him again.  Jeff Carr knew the game.  North, south, east, and west to the uttermost confines of the United States (Canada and Mexico included), the man-handled hoboes carried the word that Cheyenne was “horstile.”  Fortunately, I never encountered Jeff Carr.  I passed through Cheyenne in a blizzard.  There were eighty-four hoboes with me at the time.  The strength of numbers made us pretty nonchalant on most things, but not on Jeff Carr.  The connotation of “Jeff Carr” stunned our imagination, numbed our virility, and the whole gang was mortally scared of meeting him.